


Bloodied Feet on Hallowed Ground - Small Pieces

by dragonifyoudare



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Dragon Age Drunk Writing Circle, How do you tag a drabble collection without being obnoxiously long?, Multi, Pre-Femslash
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:42:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22307371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonifyoudare/pseuds/dragonifyoudare
Summary: Drabbles and such for Dragon Age Drunk Writing Circle, most of them within my headcanon-verse. Unbeta'd unless otherwise specified.Latest: Leliana and Natia have some time to themselves after the defeat of the archdemon, during which Natia tries a very spikey food, which is also a metaphor.
Relationships: Female Brosca/Leliana (Dragon Age), Female Inquisitor/Cullen Rutherford, Fenris/Female Hawke
Kudos: 6





	1. pre-F!Brosca/Leliana | harbor, night, open window

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath of Uldred's defeat and the death of Solona Amell, Natia and Leliana have a talk. Takes place shortly after [The Martyr of Kinloch Hold](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22307371/chapters/53281003).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompted by [tevivinter](https://tevivinter.tumblr.com) over on tumblr.

“You’ve been acting odd ever since Solona gave you that flower,” Natia said. She and Leliana were in the room they’d be sharing at the Spoiled Princess. Natia was sitting on her bed, while Leliana had pulled the room’s only chair over beside her own bed and was staring out the adjacent window, across the lake to Kinloch Hold. She didn’t respond to Natia’s words.

“Is the tower on fire or something?” Natia said sarcastically. Leliana turned to glare at her, and Natia realized what she’d just implied. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t mean to…” She trailed off lamely.

“Solona was a good woman. She didn’t deserve to die,” Leliana said, turning back to the lake. Natia tended to avoid looking at it. That much water in one place felt wrong, like so much on the surface.

“She didn’t. Most of them didn’t, I figure,” Natia said. She pulled out the little glass flower Solona had given her and twirled it by the stem. The thing was stronger than glass had any right to be, or it wouldn’t have survived their battle with Uldred. It hadn’t shattered. It hadn’t torn the way Solona’s skin had at the end, when…

Natia bit her lip, hard, almost until it bled. There was nothing she could do about the past.

“You said something about the flowers having meaning?” she said to Leliana. She had to do something to stop the other woman from staring out at the lake with that knife-sharp despair on her features.

“Yours is compassion,” Leliana said. “She said they were wishes for each of us, and I can’t help thinking she had a point, Natia. You have a good heart, but I wonder how you can see so much death and then joke about more.” She was still staring out the window.

Natia crossed the room to sit on the other bed, closer to Leliana.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “It was thoughtless. I think it’s of a defense. In Dust Town, in the Carta, if you show that it affects you, you’re showing weakness. Joking about it, too. That’s a way to show you’re strong. It’s stupid, it’s all stupid, but it kept me alive and my mother and sister fed until Barhat started paying for my sister to shack up with nobles.” She couldn’t seem to stop talking. “And you better believe the only way to cope with  _ that _ was to make it funny. It’s like armor, but a hell of a lot harder to take off.” Finally, Leliana looked away from the lake and toward Naita. Her eyes shone in the light of the room’s single oil lantern, and the flame glinted off her hair. She was so damn beautiful.

“What, uh, what was the flower she gave you?” Natia asked, lamely, trying to distract herself from that train of thought.

“Nightshade. For truth. She was a perceptive woman.” Leliana took a deep breath. “There is something you should know, Natia. I lied to you, about why I left Orlais...”


	2. Fenris/F!Hawke | finding something unexpected while cleaning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some unexpectedly angsty, DAI era Yana Hawke/Fenris, with a bit of surprise hiding in there for that'll come up in [Their Chorus Was a Battle Cry](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18790258/chapters/44581609)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For [midnightprelude](https://midnightprelude.tumblr.com/), who prompted "Finding something unexpected while absently cleaning".

The last inn before the mountain road to Skyhold was so full of people that Yana worried someone had recognized them when they were given a room to themselves. Hopefully it had just been Fenris’s glaring.

“Last customer got religion all of a sudden,” the innkeeper informed them as she handed Yana the key. “Left some stuff, and I haven’t gotten around to cleaning it yet. You want them clothes, you can take them.”

‘Them clothes’ were a pair of well made woolen dresses that stank of ale. There was clearly a story here, but Yana didn’t have the energy to investigate. Yana picked up the pile, trying to decide if she had the energy to bring them down to the innkeeper or out to one of the little groups of people who couldn’t afford a room. Someone in the latter category would probably have use for something warmer, if more fragrant, than their own clothing.

Something tumbled out of the pile: a book. With a sigh, Yana bent over to pick it up, rubbing her back. Then she froze.

_ The Tale of the Champion,  _ by Varric Tethras.

Yana felt tears welling in her eyes. Damnit, she  _ hated  _ that, and it was happening more and more of late. It was to be expected, she supposed, but she still couldn’t stand these sudden bursts of emotion.

A warm hand on her shoulders drew her out of her mind and back to the present. She tossed the book to the floor and leaned back into Fenris’s touch.

“We’re here,” he said. “We’re alive.” It had become a mantra for them in the years since Kirkwall, a way to remind each other that they were still going, that everything they’d been through hadn’t broken them, either individually or as a couple.

They were of a height, so she was able to lean here head back onto his shoulder easily. Her hand found his, and she gripped it. “We’re here,” she repeated. “We’re alive. And we’re together.”


	3. Cullen/semi-Trevelyan | Zinnia- I mourn your absence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For midnightprelude on tumblr and the DA Drunk Writing Circle.

She’s not coming. He knows this, even before the final avalanche. They both knew it when she walked out of the Chantry to meet this Elder One. She is not coming out of Haven. There won’t even be a chance to recover her body.

He has a flare of hope, bright and sharp and so, so brief, when the others who went with her catch up to the back of their slow, ragged train. But Blackwall meets his eyes, and shakes his head, and Cullen knows: She’s not coming.

He will think, later, that this is when he began to fall in love with her: when he had to truly face the fight ahead without her.


	4. F!Brosca/Leliana | delicate pleasures

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompted by [tevivinter](https://tevivinter.tumblr.com) and [midnightprelude](https://midnightprelude.tumblr.com/) on tumblr.

The soon-to-be-Warden Commander of Ferelden lay on her stomach on a rock on the Antivan shore, soaking in the sun and waiting for her lover to somehow procure their promised lunch. Leliana had sworn they didn’t need to bring anything but a couple lemons and the loaf of crusty bread which Natia was, at this point, very tempted to tear into. Before she could do so, a red-haired head popped up by a rock a few yards out into the bay, and Leliana clambered up onto it.

She was gloriously naked, soaked from head to toe, and grinning at Natia in a way that had the dwarven woman grinning back immediately, and probably in a much more dopey way. Leliana did that to her. She had an infuriating way of making Natia go soft, in several senses of the word.

Leliana had a net bag of… something. Natia wasn’t sure what. It looked dark and possibly spikey. Maybe some sort of sea plant.

As it turned out, it was not a plant.

“Sea urchins?” Natia found herself saying a few minutes later, somewhat incredulously. “We’re going to eat these? They’re spinier than a blight wolf.”

“Fortunately, you don’t eat the spines,” Leliana said, smiling that same damned smile. She reached into the pile of their clothing and pulled out one of the many, many knives therein. It looked like one of Natia’s. Reaching between the spines, she cut off a piece of the top. Then she cut one of the lemons in half and squeezed the juice into the urchin. Natia peered into it, then looked up at Leliana skeptically.

“I think I might prefer the spines,” Natia said.

Leliana scooped out a bit of something yellow with a piece of bread and offered it to Natia.

“I’d better not regret this,” Natia said, taking it.

“I’ve discovered that some of the Maker’s greatest gifts come with a rather aggressive exterior.”

“And those other bits in there?”

Leliana looked down into the sea urchin, with its gelatinous membranes. “Metaphors are rarely perfect. Do you like the roe?”

She did.


End file.
